Delivered by Professor Howard Phillips
at AGM at Ravenswood House, 28 January 2016)

2015 was a difficult year for
the VRS. The chief sources of this difficulties were
ill-health, both personal and institutional.

The institutional ill-health
has been that afflicting the SA Post Office which has become increasingly
unreliable as a deliverer of our books, yet has charged more and more to do so.
‘Delivering less for more’ might well be its all too accurate mantra! In our
particular case, the price of sending a 1 kilogram book by post has nearly doubled,
from R22.80 to R40.80. This is one of main reasons why our annual subscription
had to be raised this year. If you want something really concrete to worry
about at night on behalf of the VRS, the faltering, expensive SA Post Office will
be an appropriate topic because the distribution of our volumes depends almost
entirely on it, as using commercial couriers is even
costlier. The VRS will have to think innovatively out of the box to address
this looming problem.

The second kind of ill-health
which struck the Society in 2015 was personal.

This saw the volume it had
planned to publish in 2015, the E. Cape Journals of the Rev. James Laing, put
on hold because of acute illness in the family of the editor. Failing health
also led to the resignations of two pillars of the Society, our treasurer, Piet
Westra, and our administrator, Cora Ovens, and to the resignations of both of
our office volunteers, Emil Shreve and Jean Redelinghuys. Moreover, our Council
member from KZN, the enthusiastic and creative Johan Wassermann, also resigned
as he moved to Pretoria.

Happily, we have been able to find two able
successors to Piet Westra and Cora Ovens, Danie de Villiers and Rolf Proske.
Danie has already shown plenty of zeal and hard-headed insight in managing our
finances since taking over as treasurer in June, while Rolf is being blooded
tonight. Taking the minutes of this AGM is his first VRS task. May both of you
flourish in your new positions!

Both Danie and Rolf have big
shoes to fill. Piet Westra served the VRS as treasurer for 33 years (1982-2015)
and in that time grew our funds prodigiously through shrewd investment and
well-judged financial planning. That the VRS has been able to perform its core
business of publishing so successfully since the 1980s is because it has rested
on the firm financial foundation laid by Piet.In its tribute to him on his resignation, the VRS Council correctly paid
tribute to his ‘financial skills and named him as a major source of wisdom and
profit.’

Equally pivotal to the
Society’s success has been Cora Ovens who joined us in 2006. So all-encompassing
has been her efficient, up-and-doing, dedicated contribution as our
administrator, events-organizer, zealous bookseller, newsletter compiler,
website and Facebook editor, negotiator with bookshops and printers and series
editor that it is quite likely that a future history of the VRS will label the
era before she became our administrator in 2006 as B. C. – that is, ‘before
Cora’.

To signal our deep gratitude to
these two stalwarts of the Society for jobs very well done, I wish to hand them
each a token of our appreciation. They well deserve such recognition.

I also wish to thank very
sincerely our two part-time office assistants who stepped into the
administrative breach readily when Cora’s condition began to deteriorate
suddenly, Sandra Commerford and Jackie Loos. It has been re-assuring to know
that I could count on them unhesitatingly to undertake all manner of chores at
short notice. Moreover, Jackie went an extra mile for the VRS by devoting two
of her regular ‘The Way We Were’ articles in the Cape Argus to the VRS. Unhappily, Jackie will be leaving her
position with us at the end of next month, so if anyone is willing to volunteer
their time one morning a week to help out in the office, please contact us
asap. We need the assistance.

Despite all of these
difficulties, we did sign up 38 new members in 2015, but simultaneously lost 49
to death, downscaling and immigration. Currently our membership stands at 1129
(cf. 1178 in 2014), of whom 707 are paid up. The 422 unpaid up members, though
they do not receive an annual volume, do cost us something as many do not have
e-mail and thus newsletters sent to them incur printing and postage fees. We
are therefore considering sending a final notice to all those who last paid
their subscription in 2012 and if there is no response, then removing them as members altogether. If we did this today, our total membership
would drop to a disconcerting 975.

In part, recruiting those 38
new members is a tribute to having a stall at a number of historical
conferences, book-fairs and festivals and to public lectures and radio
interviews given by Council members. For their input in this regard, thanks
must go to Elizabeth van Heyningen, Sandy Shell, François Cleophas, Johan
Wassermann and Susie Newton-King. We hope that Boris Gorelik’s lectures at the
UCT Summer School this week, a second launch of his volume there at lunchtime
tomorrow and a third launch at Bookdealers in Johannesburg on 11 February will
swell our numbers in similar fashion. For our participation in the Summer
School we thank its director, Medeé Rall.

Another way in which we are
trying to secure new members is by going the e-book route. We have had our 2015
volume digitized in the hope that such a version may be a cost-effective means
of marketing the book in Russia. The e-book market is one which we are just
beginning to explore and no doubt we will have to make ad hoc decisions about
doing so as we proceed. It is an experiment tentatively in progress.

Anything but tentative is the
list of volumes in the pipeline: Rev. James Laing’s E. Cape journal, the
autobiography of the pioneering African journalist Selope Thema, the letters of
President Steyn of the OFS, the letters of the early African nationalist and
literary figure Sol Plaatje, an oral history of the Spanish flu pandemic and
the second volume of François Le Vaillant’s epic Travels into the Interior of Africa. Publishing all of these will
take us until 2021. 2021 will, of course, see us already well into the second
century of our existence for we will turn 100 in 2018. How we should mark this
centenary has been exercising the minds of your Council for some time. A
special VRS 100 fund-raising appeal to secure our financial future for the next
100 years, a targeted recruiting drive, a celebratory banquet, a centennial
volume, ‘The Best of the VRS’, and a special VRS 100 wine from Riebeeck Cellars
have all been suggested. We will weigh up the pros and cons of each and this
year pursue those likely to yield the best results. However, the suggestion
book is not yet closed, so if you have bright, practical ideas or a willingness
to assist, please contact our office very soon.

To sum up, we met the serious
challenges which confronted us in 2015 through a mixture of energy, creativity
and lateral thinking. For providing ample supplies of these commodities I wish
to place on record my gratitude to my Council and in particular to my executive
committee, Elizabeth van Heyningen, Danie de Villiers, Sandy Shell, Chris v.d. Merwe and Ian Farlam. We are bruised and sometimes breathless,
but unbowed. At the risk of tempting fate (and perhaps others closer to home), I
would say that, despite our serious difficulties in 2015, #VRS (Van Remains
Standing).